Ahead of schedule and under budget. That was the headline at a press conference Tuesday on a freshly-patched section of pavement on Canal Street before lake-bound lanes were reopened.

“When you have the money and you have the team, you can get a lot done,” Mayor Mitch Landrieu said.

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The repairs took seven weeks and months fewer than expected. It cost around $3.5 million, which the city had initially budgeted at $5 million.

“This required everybody to come together, Sewerage and Water Board, Public Works, all the utilities and everybody was on station and worked 24-7 to get this done,” said Cedric Grant, executive director of the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board.

But after city and state leaders made their statements, questions quickly focused on how this massive crater was fixed so quickly, yet the city’s interior streets remain pocked with potholes. Some damage was a problem for residents before hurricane Katrina added its own wave of infrastructure issues.

“You mean, why did we fix this quickly, and all the potholes haven’t been fixed yet? Is that what you’re asking me?” Landrieu said. “Well, first of all, this is one site, it’s not all over. And secondly, as I’ve said many, many, many times, it’s going to cost about $9 billion to fix the infrastructure across the city. Thirdly, there are hundreds of millions of dollars in road projects going on as we speak. As we get more money and get more capacity, we will continue to fix the interior streets. Almost all of the major streets have been filled.”

Landrieu said he received about $2 billion from FEMA, but needs $7 billion more to repair city roads. He said an immediate solution to the city’s larger infrastructure problem is an impossible task until the money is there. During his six years in office, Landrieu said over 260,000 pot holes have been filled.

“I didn’t create this problem. When they built this city on top of a swamp and then we suffered through the hurricanes, that is a challenge that we are going to have,” Landrieu said.

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